BOULDER, Colo. - The green industry consolidation that has affected manufacturers, suppliers and lawn and landscape businesses is launching its way into cyberspace with the first major consolidation of green industry “dot-com” companies. e-Greenbiz.com Inc., a marketplace for the exchange of green-goods and hard-goods on the Internet, and Growzone Inc., a provider of Internet tools for the horticultural industry, announced Dec. 15, 2000, that they have signed a letter of intent to merge the business-to-business (B2B) assets of both companies.
Under the proposed agreement, e-Greenbiz.com will assume the role of providing the technology solution and customer relationship management for the two companies. Existing customers from Growzone’s Greenbuyer.com web site will be integrated into the e-Greenbiz.com web site.
Growzone provides technology-based solutions to the retail garden center and landscape contractor industries to enable them to use the Internet to manage aspects of their businesses, including sales, costs, productivity and efficiency. The company offers hosted web sites for retail garden centers and individual direct marketing tools that can be added to existing web sites.
"We believe that there is a tremendous future for using the Internet to simplify business-to-business transactions in the horticultural industry", said Chuck Bland, president of Growzone. "And that by combining our B2B resources, the new company will be the clear winner in this segment."
"We are really excited about adding Growzone's customers to our own thus creating what will be the largest marketplace serving the horticultural industry", said John Cochran, president and CEO of e-Greenbiz.com.
No date has been set for the closing of the transaction, but both sides expressed optimism that it could be complete by the end of the year, according to a news release.
MORE ON CONSOLIDATION. Both Bland and Cochran predicted consolidation on the Internet side of the green industry in interviews during October this year.
Bland said, "I think there will be a consolidation and a kind of acceleration in the next six months. You’re going to see two or three of the strong guys probably emerge and create a clear winner.”
Cochran also talked about how many green industry-related Internet companies could survive. "I think there will probably be three major players - one strong play in the overall green industry, and then two smaller more niche plays that will survive and really thrive," he said.
The combination of e-Greenbiz.com and Growzone’s assets has set the wheels in motion for their consolidation predictions to begin to come true.
For more information about the Internet’s involvement in the changing face of the green industry, click here: Connecting The Green Industry Online.
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